


a soft and heavy weight

by SolaSola



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Autistic Gorgug Thistlespring, Character Study, F/M, Gorgug centric, Hoodies, Not the focus of the work but written with intention at least, Sharing Clothes, Takes place indeterminately across both freshman and sophomore years, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25082359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolaSola/pseuds/SolaSola
Summary: “I, um. I think I picked up yours by accident? And if you don’t mind I, um. I kind of like it?” Zelda tips up the ends of both sentences like they’re questions, but she tips her own head down so Gorgug can’t really see her eyes behind her hair. He’s a little distracted anyway, because now he’s properly looking at her and her hair’s all tucked up into the neck of the hoodie and it’s making this little bubble she’s hiding in and hereally likes her. And her hair. When it’s like this.He kind of wonders if he could put her hands in her hair and fluff it a little, how she would react.Focus, Gorgug.[Gorgug and Zelda both practically live in their hoodies. Zelda also happens to like hers oversized, so they wear the same size. It was inevitable that they'd end up sharing.Or: bashful barbarian power couple are extremely heart eyes for each other]
Relationships: Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 20
Kudos: 135





	a soft and heavy weight

Gorgug always wears his hoodie. Fig’s helped him pack for tour and seen all ten of the same soft grey one, just the right size to fit around his shoulders. The insides are still so, so soft even after years of Digby putting them through the Thistlesprings’ extremely overengineered and semi-illegal ultrasonic washboard and wringer every week. And while Gorgug definitely doesn’t need name tags in all his clothes anymore, even the washboard hasn’t taken out the permanent marker “Gorgug T.” written on all of the labels in Wilma’s handwriting. That was back in kindergarten, when they could already tell he’d grow into the XXL. Gorgug still kind of likes it.

Gorgug wears his hoodie because he likes routine. The ink on his skin and the tooling on his axe holster have the same tin flower designs. For all it hadn’t really helped his first day at Aguefort, he still likes remembering how his parents sent him off. He likes putting on the same thing every day and having a backup that’s the exact same if he starts to smell like smoke from fire damage or rips some threads loose while he’s raging. Whenever the Cig Figs van pulls up to a new venue, Fig always goes nosing off like a german shepherd to find all the new things, the spots she can adjust her show to make use of the shape of the stage and the places where the prestidigitated laser effects will come from. But Gorgug likes that he gets to set up his drum kit just the same every night no matter where they are. The pedals will always be the same distance from his feet; the drumsticks will always feel the same in his hands. 

There was a time when he was changing all the time: breaking his bed in a new and terrible way every morning, worrying that when he got home from school in the afternoon he’d have already grown the couple of inches that meant he couldn’t get in his own front door anymore. He’d have to sleep on the lawn, maybe, where he’d get rained on. In freshman year, he’d fought corn gremlins and gotten his hand sliced open in orc heaven with a group of kids from detention one afternoon and by the next day the tiefling girl who’d been downed on the floor next to him was accusing him of stealing backpacks. By now, putting his life in the hands of the Bad Kids feels as natural as a deep breath or the way gravity arcs a battleaxe’s head down to the ground, but Gorgug’s spent his fair share of nights staring up at the ceiling and thinking _do they like me do they like me do they like me_. 

Gorgug remembers being six feet tall and twelve years old, eyes full of angry tears from some tantrum. He’d slammed his front door closed behind him and just climbed with all the strength of a middle-school barbarian’s rage as high as he could into the Thistlespring tree until the branches became thin and whippy. Mostly he remembers crouching near the tip of a branch and feeling the air whip by him, clinging on for what felt like dear life as the branch bobbed underneath his weight and in too-strong wind. Gorgug thinks sometimes that he’s spent a lot of his life like that: strong enough to hold on but still being tossed around.

Some days he wonders if he’s Gorgug T. anymore, this new him who fights dragons and kisses a boy at prom and still frowns at his friends when they say “this is hell” because it’s _not_. He thinks it in the green room with his headphones on, tapping his sticks on the table getting ready but not hearing his own sound through the noise cancellation. He thinks it calling Zelda from hotel rooms on the road, rock star Figueroth Faeth sacked out on the couch next to him after a night of wining and dining VIPs. He thinks it holding Zelda’s hand, her circling her fingers over his razor-leaf scar. He thinks it and then he checks the tags in the collars of his hoodies for his mom’s handwriting, just to be sure. Just to remember. 

* * *

Zelda always wears her hoodie. She’ll go on shopping trips with Sam and Ostentatia to the Elm Valley Mall and offer her opinion on different dresses and scrunchies and shoes like any good friend would, but she likes her outfit, thank you very much. It’s dark green, a very oversized XXL, warm as her own fur. And it’s actually _better_ for mobility in the battle dance, _thank you very much Porter_ , because satyrs have fought in tunics and baltea for centuries. 

Zelda wears her hoodie because she likes safety. She needs a pocket, since she often isn’t wearing pants. (It doesn’t hurt that it’s big enough to hold her crystal, her earbuds, and two whole Elm Valley Pretzel Stand soft pretzels so she doesn’t start nibbling on clothes or anything else while waiting for Sam to come out of the changing rooms. A girl needs her essentials on hand.) When she was first growing horns and it hurt and they were amplifying the sound into her ears somehow and it was all too much all the time she could pull the hood up over her head and retreat into her hair. Zelda talks to the Seven Maidens about it, camped out in the Red Waste and looking up at the rain fly of their tent from their sleeping bags.

“I could never,” Penny shivers in the desert night. “After the palimpsests? Small spaces and covering up my peripheral vision or my hearing? That’s definitely a no from me.” She quiets a little—by now the rest of the maidens know to wait out Penny’s silences. “Rogue classes were doing Search skills before spring break started and there were so many secret doors and tiny tunnels and I never want to do that again,” she finishes quietly. The maidens have talked about how Penny’s switched to the Alert feat, and how much better she likes it. It takes nights like these out in the Waste, though, for her to talk about why. Zelda gives her a big hug and kind of presses her face into her shoulder and Penny ruffles her hair at the top of her head between her horns a little bit, a nonverbal thanks. 

For all she loves her friend, though, Zelda doesn’t think she’ll ever agree. She remembers feeling like she was floating in that palimpsest, nothing to grab on to, clear gemstone but nothing to see beyond, a crystal floor too smooth for hooves to get a grip on. The sound of hooves on glass, that _click click click_ , is something that was all she heard for days in there. If she could have her way, Zelda would carpet the world in moss and soft things so she wouldn’t have to hear it ever again. She likes nibbling on her hoodie strings, rubbing her thumb back and forth over the inside texture of the ribbed cuffs. She likes knowing that when it’s cold or dark or loud she can retreat into a soft hood over her horns and ears. She likes feeling the weight of something way too big for her. It reminds her that she’s here and not floating in there. It reminds her that she has a little shelter of her own right here.

* * *

It’s a swelteringly hot weekend in June, just before the school year ends. For some godforsaken reason, the Donovans have decided to compound the misery by lighting a gigantic bonfire on their lawn in the middle of the afternoon. There are no words for Gorgug’s relief when Zelda grabs his hand and leads him away from where the air’s already starting to shimmer. His head was already starting to swim—are Zelda’s family trying to make mirages appear on purpose? And why is there a box of fireworks terrifyingly close to the massive blaze?

Zelda’s got a picnic blanket laid out at the edge of the lawn where it begins to turn into woods. “Part of the bonfire ritual is libations of milk,” she says, “so my dad was okay with me picking up some ice cream sandwiches from Basrar’s. One for the bonfire, two for us.” Gorgug has no idea how they’ve stayed frozen in that picnic basket in ninety-plus degree heat, but he gladly takes one. Even if it starts immediately melting in his hand, it’s delicious. And anyway, ice cream drips in the grass probably count as a libation? So maybe Zelda’s family are totally chill with that happening. 

Gorgug finally gives into the heat and strips off his hoodie, and Zelda pillows her head on his t-shirt clad chest and looks up at the clouds. They end up lying down on the grass and talking about everything and nothing against the dull roar of a Faunus bonfire dance and random pops of explosives. It’s not that weird for them, honestly. The Seven Maidens have a road trip slash quest to Bastion City planned this summer; it might intersect with a couple of Cig Figs concerts. Zelda tells Gorgug about how she and Antiope got Penny to listen to some of the Cig Figs’ music for the first time, and Gorgug hums interestedly. Fig’s always got random admirers in the front row, but it might be nice to get some of their friends really good seats. 

“I’m gonna ask Lola—that’s Fig’s manager—how to get you guys tickets,” he says. Gorgug can feel Zelda’s head rising and falling on his chest when he talks, so he tries to move as little possible. “It’d be pretty kick-ass to have you guys there.”

Zelda giggles. “Right in the front row, huh. Where Fig allegedly has thrown fishnet stockings to the crowd.”

“It wasn’t just fishnets! She grabbed one of my drumsticks one time to give to someone! I had to find a spare before the next day’s show!” And that sets Gorgug off on a story of his own, looking up through the trees at the clouds as he tells Zelda about being on tour with Fig. 

Pointing out pictures in the clouds turns into watching the sunset through the trees and then into watching a slowly blinking satellite cross the constellations. The Donovans’ fire slowly burns down into a charred pyre in the still disgustingly hot but now pitch black night. Gorgug helps Zelda pack up their blanket and take the basket in to the kitchen, and both of them join some of Zelda’s cousins in picking up discarded laurel crowns and water bottles and plastic caps from the fireworks. Gorgug always feels best when he’s got something to do with his hands, and this is no exception, roaming the Donovans’ lawn by the light of an open kitchen window and the burnt-down coals of the fire. He ducks to get through the doorways and deposits the trash bag that he and Zelda filled up in a corner of the garage. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says shyly, and Zelda jumps up to pull his face down and give him a peck on the cheek before he heads out to the van. She waves as he buckles his seatbelt and rolls his window down for one last goodbye as he’s pulling out of the Donovans’ driveway.

It’s been a good day despite the heat. And even though getting invited to a bonfire so he can hang out with his girlfriend on the edge of the lawn is nothing special, they still make a ritual out of saying goodbye every time. 

* * *

On Monday morning at his locker before first period, Gorgug feels more than sees Zelda appear at his side, looking up at him. He pulls his headphones down around his neck and turns to look down at her.

Zelda’s chewing absently one of the ends of her hoodie drawstring. That in itself isn’t unusual, and Gorgug frowns trying to figure out what’s off. It feels a bit like when he’s about to ask someone if they’re his dad again. Maybe he should ask? Mercifully, Zelda says something before he’s spent too much time considering it seriously. 

“You know when we were just, like, hanging out yesterday and we both kind of left our hoodies just on the grass?”

Gorgug nods slowly. That doesn’t actually tell him what’s wrong—did he forget something?

“I, um. I think I picked up yours by accident? And if you don’t mind I, um. I kind of like it?” Zelda tips up the ends of both sentences like they’re questions, but she tips her own head down so Gorgug can’t really see her eyes behind her hair. He’s a little distracted anyway, because now he’s properly looking at her and her hair’s all tucked up into the neck of the hoodie and it’s making this little bubble she’s hiding in and _he really likes her. And her hair. When it’s like this._ He kind of wonders if he could put her hands in her hair and fluff it a little, how she would react. _Focus, Gorgug._

“I didn’t—I didn’t realize we wear the same size,” he says, frowning. 

“I, um. I always buy them oversized? So they kind of go over my hands.” Zelda holds up her hands, and now that’s just unfair, because she’s got little sweater paws and she just looks really cozy like this. But Gorgug does remember, now, that Zelda does pull her sleeves over her hands a lot. She plays with her cuffs in the back of barbarian class or digs her nails into her palms through two thick layers of fabric. Sometimes Gorgug’s looked at her long sleeves and thought it would be nice to have that extra fabric for when he flaps his hands a little.

Zelda looks him in the eyes, and Gorgug’s not really sure what she sees there since he’s not quite making eye contact, but he does see her smile. “I really do like your hoodie. It um, it smells? Like you a little bit? And it’s _really_ soft.”

“Eugh, it smells like bloodrush practice sweat and twigs that keep getting stuck in my hood when I don’t duck fast enough going in my own front door?” His grimace turns into a smile against his own volition.

Zelda punches him lightly in his side. “It’s soft and I think it’s nice, okay? You have good taste in hoodies.”

Gorgug’s smile turns into a big grin, because he doesn’t always know what to say but Zelda makes it easy. He knows the words that go here. “Then I guess you have good taste in boyfriends.” Zelda fake-punches him again and he exaggerates a big flinch, putting his hands up in mock dismay and taking a step back, smiling the whole way.

Gorgug takes a deep breath. “If you don’t mind,” he says, “I kind of like that you like it. You can keep it, maybe? But, well, y’know, only if I get to borrow one from you. If they’re all the same size.” 

Gorgug’s surprised when Zelda actually reaches into her locker and pulls out one of her dark green sweatshirts, folded neatly into a square bundle. “I thought so,” she says. “You, uh. You don’t have to—“

But Gorgug’s already stripped out of his own hoodie and is wiggling into hers. He maybe almost smacks an earth genasi walking by with one of his flailing arms while his head’s still stuck in the collar, except for the fact that Zelda grabs his wrist. Awkward as it is to just switch hoodies for no apparent reason in the middle of the hallway before first period, it feels. Good. 

Okay, maybe Zelda’s hoodie fits a little smaller than his own, maybe just from being shrunken down in the wash (sometimes Gorgug forgets that not every house gets Digby Thistlespring’s ultrasonic washboard, after all). It feels like a hug, like when he wraps his arms tight around himself in the back of class so he can get his brain to go back to listening to Porter talk. It feels good, and he tells Zelda so.

The bell rings and Zelda hops up to give him a little kiss on the cheek and Gorgug gives her a little wave back as they head their separate ways—her to history, him to gym. 

It’s not until he’s changing back out of his gross gym clothes and putting his hoodie—Zelda’s hoodie—back on that he sticks his hands in the front kangaroo pocket. Something crinkles in a very un-fabric-like way. 

It’s a note. _I’m glad we get to have this. I’m glad I get to have you. Hope it fits. Love, Z._

Gorgug fully panics and pulls his hood—Zelda’s hood—up over his ears because he needs to _take a moment oh my gods_ . Ragh and Fabian both come tumbling out of the showers hollering but they both let him hide his face pretending to riffle through his locker with just a couple of slaps on the back (Fabian jumps up and gets him on the way down so it’d make anyone but Gorgug stagger). It takes a lot for other people to read Gorgug’s expressions usually, but he’s dead certain that his green skin is a Fig Faeth shade of tiefling red right now because _how is this his life_. 

Zelda’s hoodie feels like a hug and her playlist is thumping through his ears and he presses his nails gently into his palm in slow fists because it’s a lot and he wants to be able to really feel all of it. To absorb it into his skin. It’s a lot and it feels right.

Gorgug takes out his crystal and texts Zelda even though she’s probably still in class, _Found your note. Best girlfriend in the world._ He adds three smiley faces, two heart emojis, and an axe emoji and just sits there on the highly disgusting bench in the locker room, his crystal thrumming in his hand and Zelda’s chop metal playlist in his headphones, grinning his face off until the bell rings. 

* * *

It’s late at night on a Sunday, and Gorgug’s feeling honest. Or, well, maybe it’s a little more than just the hour on the clock—it’s a late night _with Zelda_ , and Gorgug’s feeling honest. It’s the way it always works for them—he comes over to do homework and hang out with his girlfriend and then the night mellows out into a quiet calm. 

Gorgug’s sitting on the floor, his back against the side of her bed, and Zelda’s sitting on her bed with her legs slung over his shoulders like a fuzzy roller coaster safety harness. Even though Gorgug’s eyes are closed—sue him, it’s almost midnight—he can feel Zelda’s fingers tugging at his hair a little bit. Zelda’s told him before that that means she’s putting little braids in, but she always takes them out before he can get to a mirror to see them. Maybe, Gorgug thinks, one day he’ll ask her to just leave them in. He knows it’s just a fidget for her, and he enjoys just having her fingers work through his hair, but it might be nice sometime.

Gorgug’s okay at being honest, actually. It just takes a while for him to get his words lined up in his mouth in the order he wants them. Zelda’s a quiet person herself, and she always waits him out.

So Gorgug lets her start a new braid, near the front of his head where his hair grows white. He makes a tiny roll out of the hem of his—Zelda’s—sweatshirt between the pads of his fingers and says, “Thanks for your hoodie, by the way.” 

Zelda hums and kicks her legs gently, her hooves bumping against his chest like a reminder she’s listening. “I like that we get to share,” she says honestly.

The words that come out of his mouth aren’t exactly what he means, but he goes ahead anyway: “It’s a nice reminder. Of you. Even though I see you every other period and after school. If that makes sense? And the color’s nice.”

“Yours are really soft.”

“Yours are too! And they kind of smell like woodsmoke. It’s nice.”

“Oh yikes, that’s probably from how my dad keeps being really into bonfire rituals.”

“And how Antiope built way too big of a signal pyre last time you guys were out in the Far Haven Woods,” Gorgug says. He wasn’t there, but Zelda told him the story.

“Oh gods, yes.” It’s not that Gorgug can see Zelda rolling her eyes, but he’s 99.5% sure it’s happening. Like how he was 99.5% when he actually found his dad. It’s just a certainty at this point. 

Gorgug waits until he feels Zelda finish off the braid she’s working on. She’s just kind of distractedly smoothing out his hair when he grabs hold of her ankles and starts standing up, pulling Zelda with a thump onto his shoulders like the start of the world’s most disorganized piggyback ride. 

“Gorgug, what the—” Zelda yelps as she slides _up_ off the bed, but she can’t stop giggling as Gorgug bounces her around the room, upside down with her ankles still held tight.

He’s laughing now too, hopping around the room like he’s one of Zelda’s family at Faunus’s midwinter bonfires. Zelda’s not tiny, she’s a barbarian and and adventurer in her own right, but Gorgug can lift her like it’s nothing and he is _deeply_ enjoying it.

Until Zelda pulls herself up like she’s doing crunches in a fantastic display of core strength until she’s properly sitting on his shoulders and wraps her arms right around his eyes so he can’t see and cackles right in his ear, “Gorgug Thistlespring! You’re gonna freaking _pay_!”

And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t play it up a little, flailing his arms out blindly and bumbling around and headbanging like it’s the middle of a Cig Figs concert in an effort to shake off his girlfriend who, yes, is being an absolute barbarian. Zelda’s giggling so hard he can feel her shaking. She’s probably not putting up as much of a fight as she wants to because her side has to be absolutely splitting from it right now. And just—she’s a comforting weight on his shoulders and he’s not _actually_ going to let her fall, he knows he can hang on, and Zelda gives good hugs even though it’s technically more like she’s grabbing his head. 

“I know I’m a dumbass, but somehow even I don’t think that’s going to hap—“

Zelda goes for his hoodie strings and pulls until he can’t see, his hood cinching up like a drawstring pouch. Gorgug goes down for real, laughing and swatting her hands away from his hoodie strings all the way down. 

“Heh. You got me.”

“I guess you got got.” Zelda smooths out his hoodie strings so that she can push the hood away from his face and drop a kiss on his cheek as they both sprawl out on her floor, hair an absolute mess and the farthest thing away from the mellow calm they had before. Gorgug screws up his face and gives her a peck on the cheek right back, which makes her laugh—he doesn’t do that a lot, mostly just leaves it to her. 

Gorgug really likes—Gorgug _loves_ that they can do this. That sometimes Zelda will tackle him off his feet when he thinks she’s just going in for a hug in the morning on the steps of the school, that they just mess around like this all the time, that he can grab his girlfriend’s ankles and flop her around her own bedroom and they’ll both end up collapsed on the carpet laughing and out of breath when she finally takes him down. 

He’s spent so much time feeling like a giant round peg in a tiny square hole. No matter how much his parents try to expand the doorways of the Thistlespring tree, he keeps hitting his head because he forgets to duck. No matter how good his magical noise-cancelling headphones are, sometimes he just needs to wrap his arms around himself and squeeze his fists slowly. No matter how much his parents have succeeded in helping him talk about feelings, sometimes he still just has to let rage thrum through his veins. 

But it goes the other way too. Sometimes Porter’s class—not Ragh, but so many of the rest of his classmates—make him feel too small when he retreats back into his hood or can’t say what rage means to him. Sometimes even Riz skips over eye contact with him and talks just to Adaine next to him instead when Gorgug really does want to understand the latest case Riz is working on. Sometimes he pulls his headphones down off his ears and could swear he’s heard the tail end of a conversation about him that he’ll never know. 

It’s just that Zelda has never made him feel like that.

Gorgug gets to love big. He’s not like Fig, isn’t going to write a pop punk love ballad he can scream to a full house. But he gets to hold Zelda’s hand walking all the way from Aguefort to Basrar’s on Friday for their longstanding ice cream date. He gets to put Zelda on his shoulders sometimes when she wants to feel tall. He gets to wear Zelda’s hoodie to school, where none of the popular kids who don’t pay attention to him will ever notice that his hoodie is a _different_ hoodie, but where his friends will roll their eyes and bump into his side and say, “oooooh, you and Zelda are sharing clothes now?” And then, even better, he gets to see her wear _his_ hoodie with her hair all tucked up in the collar almost waiting for him to fluff it out and untuck it. He gets to horse around with his girlfriend on his back and not feel too big because more often than not _she’s_ the one who’s going to get him in a grapple until he surrenders. 

But Gorgug gets to love small too. He gets to read the notes she always sneaks into his pocket and blush and then get a massive text of heart emojis when she gets home and finds the note that he drops into her hood without her noticing. He gets for both of them to just spend hours existing quietly in the same room knowing the other one’s right there. He gets her jetpacking him when they curl up on her bed for a nap, her fingers carding through his hair and her fuzzy legs resting heavily around his waist. 

After everything else it’s just a reminder for him all the time that he gets to have this. He gets to have someone fit so thoroughly into his space they don’t even have to talk about it. Gorgug remembers finding out that he and Zelda sit in the exact same desk in Porter’s class, just in different periods. It’s near the back right next to a window, the perfect seat for a barbarian who would just prefer to be quiet most of the time. 

Gorgug never expects anything to work the first time—not offering a tin flower to the first person he meets, not asking if someone is his dad, not bumbling his way through tinkering projects trying to help out his mom. He still isn’t always comfortable in himself, in all the many different sides of himself that he sometimes feels like he’s holding on to for dear life lest they escape. But with Zelda they fit perfectly into each other’s lives; they fall into weeknight study sessions and Friday afternoon ice cream dates and weekend bonfires as easy as holstering a battleaxe. They fit into each other’s hoodies, something that no one who took a casual look at their height difference would ever expect. But it’s not a contradiction that Gorgug has to hold together—the half-orc with the gnomish last name, the barbarian who would rather sing a song, the bloodrush player with the flower on his axe holster. It just is, and they just are, and it’s not what either of them intended but it just works. And it feels right. 

**Author's Note:**

> Gorgug's love language is the mortifying ordeal of being known but it's also kind of just being able to tussle with his girlfriend. 
> 
> This fic got away from me and ended up being way more about Gorgug than Zelda—I might end up writing a coda from Zelda's perspective if people are interested?
> 
> I drew Zelda in Gorgug's gigantic hoodie to go along with this fic [ here! ](https://acedetectivegukgak.tumblr.com/post/622419158004596736/got-out-my-paints-for-the-first-time-in-forever-to)
> 
> Kudos and comments feed my lil creator soul like Riz chowing down on Kalvaxus, and I reply to every one! This is my first fic for Dimension 20 since falling _deeply_ into it just a couple of weeks ago.
> 
> Find my D20 sideblog on tumblr @acedetectivegukgak!


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